


Tangle of Snakes

by violent_ends



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Porn, Comfort/Angst, Episode: s04e10 Who's da New King of Hell?, F/F, POV Chloe, Post-Season/Series 04, Sexual Content, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 06:01:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21351400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violent_ends/pseuds/violent_ends
Summary: Eve is not Lucifer, and this isn't how it was supposed to go.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Eve
Comments: 18
Kudos: 65





	Tangle of Snakes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redledgers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redledgers/gifts).

> This is for _redledgers_, the astronaut who first planted the flag on the teeny tiny planet of Deckereve (Everstar?). I hope you like it.

Chloe is just on her way out when she comes back. The woman who shall not be named. The first. _His_ first. First lover, if not love, a thought that makes her chest ache despite the fact that there is nothing there to ache, anymore. Just hollowness, where her heart used to be, ripped out and thrown off the balcony when he kissed her goodbye.

Eve stumbles into her as she steps out of the elevator, her feet bare after leaving one sleek black shoe inside a dead demon's eye and clearly discarding the other one somewhere along the way. The detail, the fact that she walked without shoes like a little girl in the grass because she saved her from certain death, would put a smile on Chloe’s face if the ending of the story had been different. If _he_’d stayed.

“I'm sorry, I- I just came to get my stuff" Eve tells her, worrying her hands together as she slightly bounces on the floor, adrenaline probably still coursing in her veins. “I was too upset when we broke up and now I... well, I need the rest. I don’t even know what the weather will be like where I'm going.”

She’s leaving, then. Chloe doesn’t really know how she feels about it. Mostly, numb. It’s not enough of a shock to shake her into doing more than nod and step aside to let her pass.

“Where’s Lucifer?” Eve inquires almost distractedly as she makes her way in.

Chloe stays silent. She just can’t get the words out yet. _He left. He’s gone. He’s not coming back._ Saying it out loud would make it real, final. Maybe it’s better to let Eve figure it out on her own.

The brunette walks further into the penthouse, all the way inside the bedroom where Chloe assumes her clothes are – tucked inside a dedicated section of Lucifer’s closet, pretty high shoes and elegant dresses Chloe would never be able to wear with the job she has, but that Lucifer seemed to have liked, and it’s trivial and stupid and it’s not like it matters anymore.

“Did he go check on his nephew?” Eve asks from inside the bedroom, voice slightly muffled by the rustling sounds of her hurried packing. Chloe swallows around the lump in her throat and walks back in to stop by the piano.

“No" she croaks, staring at the black lacquered surface of the instrument he'll never play again, shoulder bumping against hers to follow the only melody she knows.

Eve appears from the entrance of the bedroom, a big black leather bag hanging from one hand. Her puzzled expression shifts to plain concern, big doe eyes shining, exuding all the care and sweetness that always made it impossible for Chloe to truly hate her.

“Chloe?” Eve says quietly, worried, probably taking in the tears that are welling up in her eyes again despite how hard she’s trying to keep them in.

“He went back" she manages to choke out, finally staring up at the other woman. “He went back to Hell to keep everyone safe.”

Eve drops the bag to the floor and walks down the steps to stop in front of her. Her face is pain and sorrow and regret. Chloe is fully aware that her own can’t be that different.

“Oh, Chloe" Eve says, wrapping her arms around her without hesitation. They never really touched a lot, and the contact reminds her of the one time they truly did, after Eve shielded Trixie with her body like the mother that she is- _No, stop, don’t go there_.

“I'm sorry" Chloe hears her say as she lets herself be hugged. She’s tense in the embrace, wary, because she didn’t expect to be comforted by her, of all people. But this is a night full of surprises, it seems, and she’s too tired to resist.

She holds on tight to the other woman’s frame and cries openly, her face muffled in an endless sea of black. _He’s gone. He’s gone and it’s your fault. He’s gone and it’s my fault. He’s gone and it makes no difference whose fault it is._

Except that maybe it does, and the blame is theirs to share, two women who told him they loved him only to betray him or ask him to be something he’s not. They did this, she realizes now, as they hug each other in the shell of the life he left behind, in this shipwreck that will rot away in time as if underwater, left to get covered in dust and haunted by a suffocating echo of _what if, what if, what if, what if._

What if she’d never gone to Rome. What if Eve hadn’t busted Father Kinley out. What if, by the time Eve came back into his life, Chloe had given Lucifer a surer answer than a trembling, heartbroken _I don’t know_.

Twisting and turning, their paths led them here somehow, to what is slowly taking the shape of a funeral with two widows but no coffin, no flowers, no prayers. He’s not dead after all, and he wouldn’t want any of those things anyway. He never truly got it, what it is that they mean.

Chloe’s sobs turn to quiet, timid hiccups, and Eve strokes her hair in silence, letting her vent. Chloe doesn’t even know whether Eve is crying too or not, engulfed as she is in her own despair. Probably selfish on her part. The gesture is very tender, caring, nurturing, because that’s what Eve is: the literal mother of all of humanity, the ancestral cradle they all came from. The thought is bizarre, to say the least, but there is a comforting simplicity in what they’re doing, and Chloe tells herself to stop thinking too hard.

She slowly pulls back from the crook of Eve's neck and rubs her puffy eyes with the back of one hand, offering the brunette a sheepish, grateful smile. She doesn’t have the strength to hold her any real grudge, not now. She probably will, once Eve is gone and she has endless days ahead of her to go over everything that happened and obsess over what went wrong, but there is no point in telling Eve as much.

The tempted of the Garden, later turned into the temptress that stoked Lucifer’s hellish flame and summoned demons from the bowels of the Underworld, reaches forward to brush a stray tear away from Chloe’s cheek. They lock eyes. Something shifts in the air between them, unspoken. Eve's hand lingers, exactly where _his_ did. And she leans forward, exactly like _he_ did.

Chloe holds her breath, frozen. She doesn’t know why, but she finds herself unable to step back.

They maintain eye-contact until Eve's lips press over Chloe’s, thumb soft but firm on her cheekbone. It’s just a peck; nothing, really. The time of a slow, lazy, sleepy blink back to awareness followed by a friendly, tentative smile. An apology or a peace offering or a show of comfort that wasn’t supposed to feel as good as it did. Hell, _nothing_ should be as it is, right now. And Chloe shouldn’t do what she’s about to do, piling a new betrayal on top of a tall, quivering castle of cards.

But the castle has crumbled, already. They both have fallen, as he did. They’re both cursed, as he is. They’re both lost, and won’t find him again.

There is bile in the back of Chloe’s throat when she’s the one kissing Eve instead, tasting the bitter realization that she should be doing this with _him_. This is wrong. Eve herself looks startled once Chloe pulls back slightly, the two of them staring at each other with their hands on the other woman’s cheeks. It’s obvious that Eve’s gesture wasn’t supposed to lead to anything else, much like her “assistance" in calming a drugged Ella enough to make her able to function again.

And yet, they stay like this. They stare, each of them waiting for the other to speak.

In the end, it’s Eve who seals their fate. She tends to do that, Chloe distantly acknowledges, biting into forbidden apples fallen from sacred trees and rebel angels fallen from much more sacred skies.

“It’s alright” Eve whispers, moved by what, Chloe isn’t sure; pity, maybe, or a strange sense of companionship. “He won’t mind, I promise.”

Chloe can’t say she fully believes her. After all, it’s safe to say Eve misjudged Lucifer’s character more than once, just like she did. She feels like a serpent, and maybe she is, standing on the verge of a whole new original sin whose fruit will rot and fester in her stomach. With this in mind, she gives up.

The skin under her palms is softer than it should be, smooth like her own instead of rough and prickling, a delicately curved cheekbone instead of sharp, masculine lines. But the kiss, the kiss is just as gentle, and it would be easy for Chloe to close her eyes and just pretend she’s in stronger arms. She doesn’t, though, because that is a picture she’d rather not taint, a possibility that, deep down, she hopes could still become reality one day.

Eve is not Lucifer, and this isn’t how it was supposed to go.

Chloe embraces the truth, this concept he is so fond of, and lets her mind slip back into the moment, into the unavoidable realness of Eve's tongue breaching past her lips, Eve's breasts pressing against her own as the kiss slowly grows in its intensity. She lets Eve crowd her against the sharp edge of the piano and stops herself from imagining him sitting on the bench or on the couch, watching them with jealousy or probably – no, _definitely_ – lust in his heated gaze, a wolfish grin in the darkness.

He’s not here, and this is neither a game nor a show.

Chloe doesn’t know what it is. But her body doesn’t need to.

She clutches at Eve's waist to pull her closer, slotting their hips together, searching friction and oblivion against the other woman’s thigh. Eve's dress is thin, certainly thinner than the fabric of her jeans, and Chloe can feel the heat that lies between her legs – heat he has touched with his fingers and tasted with his mouth, in this house and in another time, on his sheets and on the ground of a gentler world, Devil face sighing or angel wings spreading or neither; just as a man, perhaps, even in the Garden.

He is a ghost between them as they start grinding against each other, but a ghost that cannot hear or see them as they whimper softly against each other’s lips, unable to judge her when she decides to start walking Eve backwards toward the bed, _his_ bed. Eve's dress opens at the waist under Chloe’s fingers once they stop near the foot of the mattress, revealing curves more pronounced than her own and a flat, toned belly; and inside, a womb that birthed life and death, salvation and curse.

_Stop thinking_, Chloe tells herself. _Stop thinking or it will crush you._

“Can I?” Eve asks her, one tentative finger hovering near the button of her jeans. Chloe nods wordlessly, and the other woman undresses her in reverent silence, even kneeling to take off her boots before standing back up. Her now open dress falls from her shoulders, and suddenly they’re standing in front of each other in their underwear – black lace for Eve, grey cotton for Chloe – and the magnitude of what it means is a rock picking up speed as it rolls down a hill.

“What are we doing?” Chloe asks out loud, panting heavily. “Eve, what are we doing?”

Eve never struck her as wise, yet in this moment, Chloe feels like she needs her guidance.

“Forgetting" is Eve's reply, her child-like eyes suddenly older. “Just... forgetting everything, for a moment.”

If she has more to forget than just Lucifer, she doesn’t say, and to Chloe the answer seems like enough of a justification. It probably isn’t.

They step toward each other again and fall on the bed together, just kissing for an amount of time that seems endless, lying side by side. Their hands grow bolder, squeezing soft and hard places, and to her own surprise Chloe is the first who pushes past another boundary, unclasping the back of Eve's bra to slip it off the front and discard it behind her. She kisses down Eve's neck and pushes her long dark hair behind her shoulder to suck her nipple into her mouth, eliciting a breathless gasp that makes her pulse and clench between her legs. Eve expertly slips one thigh between hers, letting her ride it, and keeps Chloe’s head close to her breast in a silent demand while her free hand unclasps Chloe’s bra like she just did for her.

Chloe licks and sucks and kisses, but soon her own pleasure becomes overwhelming, and she finds herself grinding desperately but unable to fall off the edge, mouth slack and eyes squeezed shut. She makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat, a cry for help that Eve once again seems to be able to decipher as she pulls Chloe up to her eye-level and buries her hand inside her underwear to push one finger in. Chloe moans in relief, clutching at her naked back, and follows the slow movement of her hand by rolling her own hips languidly.

Her mind wanders off for a moment, drifting away to hover above the bed she is obscenely writhing on, fucking herself on someone else’s hand in his goddamn bed. She sees herself clearly as if from another person’s eyes, smells his scent on the sheets under her cheek, realizes the hand she has between her legs has been between his, too, and the grief and shame become too much.

“Hey," Eve whispers in concern, brushing her nose against Chloe’s when she notices tears slipping down her cheeks. “I’m sorry, do you want me to-"

“More, please" Chloe chokes out, because this was supposed to make her forget and she’s _not_, and since it will still be wrong in the end, at least for a moment it should be _good_.

Eve kisses her on the lips and slips a second finger in. She seems to realize that sweetness just won’t do, because this time the pace is ruthless, fingers pressing hard and deep, filling her where she can be filled although not where she truly needs. And Chloe still aches, wonders what _his_ fingers would feel like and hates herself for wondering, for envying this woman who knows the answer to the question.

_You’re not him. You’re not him. You’re not him. Why are you not him?_

Coming in his bed to a touch that is not his feels like a sin, and for a moment, right before falling off the edge, she wonders if this will be the last drop in a bucket of guilt already filled almost to the brim. She wonders if this, ironically, will be the crime that will lead her to him again, but in her imagination she sees him as a shadow passing by the door without entering, a prison guard who can’t find it in himself to show her mercy as she twists and trashes on this-but-not-really-this bed for eternity without ever finding release, mocked with the depravity of a pleasure that should and will be denied to her in damnation.

But Chloe is not damned, or at least not yet, and when she comes she _does_ forget: for a moment, just a moment, just like Eve said. In an incredible feat of concentration, she manages to focus with singular intent on the delicate but sure fingers filling her rhythmically, on the lips kissing her cheeks to soak up her still running tears, cooing “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay". _God_, it isn’t, but Chloe lets herself go anyway, eyes closed and a sob in her throat.

Eve pulls her hand out of her underwear once Chloe’s breath slowly goes back to normal, settling her wet, sticky fingers on Chloe’s hip. She’s silent, waiting, patient, dark hair cascading over equally dark sheets, and Chloe gets it, gets how this woman must have felt like coming home to him. She understands now, maybe even more than before, that in her warmth he found respite from her coldness, and in her acceptance, a cure to her rejection.

Safe. Familiar. Loving.

And for her love, as naive and misguided as it might have been, Eve should not be blamed.

Chloe almost does it as a _thank you_, when she moves to press Eve into the mattress, climbs on top of her and starts kissing her way down. _Thank you, for loving him when I didn’t know I did._

She slides Eve's underwear down and off her legs and looks up at her to find her big eyes almost hypnotized, maybe surprised by how sure she’s acting. Eve supports her weight on her elbows and slowly spreads her legs to accommodate a crouching Chloe in the space between. She’s beautiful and wild, sensual but somehow innocent; how she could have pictured herself as a queen of demons is beyond her.

Chloe lies down on her stomach and scoots closer to press her lips to that heat she could only sense, before. Now it’s an inferno under her mouth, engulfing her breath in flames, as Eve sighs and spreads her legs wider still, fingers clutching at the sheets on either side of her body. She lets out soft but unashamed whimpers in time with Chloe’s initially tentative kitten licks, hips rolling like a wave to chase her tongue and invite it further inside.

Chloe can’t help but press her own hips down once she complies, feeling empty once again. They soon find themselves moving in a very similar way, Chloe rutting against the bed and Eve against her face, occupying what would otherwise be the silence of a graveyard with their joined moans. Chloe’s damp panties catch between her folds and drag up and down as she moves, nipples sliding blissfully against the sheets, a wanton, desperate full-body roll.

She searches for him with her lips and cannot find him, but the yearning is morbid enough, as she takes the place that has been Lucifer’s and probably Adam’s as well, becoming for a moment a Biblical figure herself in this world of angels and demons and humans who think or pretend they can keep up. But they have been left behind, both of them, and after playing with things and creatures much bigger than them, they only have each other to use as toys.

“Come here" Eve croaks just as Chloe is about to suck on her clit in the hope of bringing them both to completion, but she doesn’t fully understand until Eve clarifies, “Come up here and turn around.”

Chloe pulls her underwear off her legs in a frenzied, almost manic motion and does as she’s been instructed, swinging her body over Eve's. At this point, all she wants is to come again, to have that minuscule but bright moment of absolute nothingness to cherish, so she sinks down without warning nor finesse and hopes Eve will be quick to catch up, considering she offered.

The rhythm, when they find it again, is way less languid than before and looks more like a race to the finish line, but one that grinds to sudden, jerking halts whenever one does something that makes the other lose focus, rendering her unable to do more than moan and press her hips down harder. It’s almost a punishing pace, but Chloe isn’t sure who is punishing who: most likely, each of them is just punishing herself.

Eve's tongue is warm and relentless on her and inside her, all delicateness forgotten, and it’s exactly what Chloe needs, because between panting, choking breaths there isn’t much time to think, not at this speed. Feeling her insides tighten, she finds herself unable to keep pleasuring Eve with her mouth any longer, so she hastily presses two fingers inside the body that lies underneath hers just in time before she’s coming again.

Eve joins her after a few seconds, doing all the work as she moves around Chloe’s hand and then freezing in place as if struck by a bullet. Her moan is blissed and long and drawn out against Chloe’s upper thigh, the final note of this forbidden song they composed together, one they’ll never sing again. Chloe flops down against Eve's side and pulls her fingers out of her clenching heat, exhausted and spent.

When the position starts to feel awkward, she turns around and lies down on her back, shoulder to shoulder with Eve. They stare at the ceiling, at nothing, catching their breaths in silence. Chloe’s hair spreads and intertwines with Eve's on top of the sheets, a mismatched tangle of snakes. Eve's body is a long, curved and endless valley of riches and perils, all soft and rounded angles where Chloe’s are taut and sharp. Neither of them seems to know what to say, until one of them does.

“Do you love him?” Eve asks, but not with the accusing tone Chloe might have expected. “I mean... truly? For who he is? _All_ that he is?”

It feels absurd to discuss it after what they just did, but it’s easy, and it lessens the potential embarrassment and shame of the moment by engulfing them both with the thought of him, of before, of what could have been and won’t ever be. It’s sad, but it’s good to let it out.

“Yes" Chloe replies automatically, because it took her too long to realize it, but now that she knows she doesn’t want to deny it.

“Good" Eve says around a smile, resigned but not spitefully so. “If he ever comes back, I want him to be happy.”

If he ever comes back. Not when.

_It was you, Chloe. It always has been._

_Please, don’t go. I love you._

_Goodbye._

Chloe’s heart skips a beat at the memory, a stutter as brief and sudden as the first flap of his wings when he took flight. She doesn’t even know how long it takes. She doesn’t even know if he landed.

“Do you?” she asks before she can stop herself, even though she thinks she knows the answer. But then, not sure whether she should phrase it differently, she adds, “Or... did you?”

Eve turns to lie on her side and look at her, supporting her head with one arm, elbow pressed into the sheets. Chloe shifts to mirror her.

“I will always love him" Eve confesses, then lets out a soft, sheepish half-laugh. “Just not the way he needs me to. And I think... I think I have to learn how to love myself first, or I'll never truly love someone else while being myself. I don’t even know who I am, you know?”

Chloe smiles, endeared despite or in light of it all. There is a child in Eve, just like there is a child in Lucifer, and the mother in her feels compelled to show understanding, even tenderness.

“You should go figure that out, then" she says.

“I will.”

Eve rolls to the opposite side and stands up from the bed to start gathering her clothes. Chloe watches her, wondering if she should do the same, but somehow the idea of leaving together and go their separate ways once outside on the sidewalk feels weird. Eve doesn’t ask her to, and simply proceeds to get dressed and retrieve the bag she left on the floor in a corner.

“Will you be okay?” Eve asks from the top of the steps, a new pair of heels adorning her feet; suddenly she’s a grown woman again, strong and determined to take on the world. Chloe sees her as a hurricane ready to turn someone else’s life upside down, an untamable wind of passion and joy and future mistakes, as human as anyone can be. As human as Chloe is.

“I don’t know" she replies. “I- I'll try.”

_And I'll wait_, she doesn’t say. _I'll still wait for him._

Eve gives her an encouraging smile and turns to leave, black curls whipping behind her.

“Good luck" Chloe feels the urge to say as she watches her walk down the steps, not knowing whether she'll ever see her again. It’s as much forgiveness as she feels inclined to concede, but after all, they have been partners in crime, inviting exorcists and demons on Lucifer’s doorstep, conspiring with plotters and deceivers behind the Devil's back. There is no absolution in sight for them, no bath of holy water in this den of sin.

Eve stops and turns slightly, her face half-concealed by her hair.

“Good luck to you too, Chloe" she says, before walking the rest of the way out of the penthouse, out of Chloe’s life. Out of Lucifer’s, although he was the one who left first.

And Chloe lies there, the smell of sex overpowering the scent of him, feeling even more hollow than she did before.


End file.
